


Singing Old Songs

by oliviathecf



Series: And All My Problems [2]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Coping, Developing Relationship, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 13:30:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliviathecf/pseuds/oliviathecf
Summary: What happens after the universe ends?





	Singing Old Songs

**Author's Note:**

> Around the beginning of this year, I wrote some smut. It was a one-off smut fic, about the world ending and Guy and Hal taking comfort in each other. I posted it from the last chair in the house I had lived in for around eight years, in the middle of a big cross country move.
> 
> This fic is a reflection of a lot of things. It's bleak but there are moments of hope. Above all, though, they didn't manage to stop the apocalypse, and this is what happens after that.
> 
> I suppose you don't need to read the first part of the fic, but it might explain somethings. You'll also see me declaring that they'll probably win in the end. Which...oops. 
> 
> Also, while the fic is rated E, the smut will come later. Sorry, I just don't want to fool anyone looking for a T/M rated story and then having to stop reading because I bump the rating up for some smut.
> 
> This is also the last fic for 2018. I'll be working to finish it before the end of the year as well, but I'm going on a trip for Christmas (to where I wrote the original fic actually), so I'm not sure I'll be able to. I just wanted to get something out though, and I figured I could split this into chapters.
> 
> Title is from Problems by Pinegrove.
> 
> Enjoy.

They didn’t end up saving the universe. There was no final hour where the chips were down, and they all banded together to save everyone and everything.

When the universe ended, or pretty much ended, there was no hand holding or posing as a team to go out together. There was a bang, sure, when the entity destroyed the central battery, but it otherwise ended on a real whimper. The entity took out itself when it destroyed the central battery, and the last thing Guy remembered seeing before passing out was his arm grabbing onto Hal, the explosion sending them in one direction while it sent John and Kyle in another.

He remembered the look on John’s face as Kyle clung to him, remembered the look of _fear_ on their faces. The way John fruitlessly reached out to them, yelling something about staying together as they were flung apart.

Guy found himself wondering what Hal’s face looked like for months after that, if he wore the same expression of fear that he had worn when he saw his dad die in front of him. A look he hadn’t ever seen before on Hal’s face, a face he seemingly never wore again. 

That happened a few months ago, or so Guy thought, time could be different on the distant planet that they were lucky enough to get to before their rings ran out of reserve power. They were lucky enough that it was a planet friendly to Green Lanterns and a plane where one person, a retired traveler, could actually speak both English and the language that the race there spoke. They had lost, badly, and yet the people on the planet still remembered the Lanterns as heroes, a fact that made Guy want to laugh in the face in their kindness, maybe he would’ve years ago, but instead he forced a smile onto his face and accepted what they had to say. 

Maybe it was why the ruler of the aliens gave them a plot of land on the outskirts of the town, why the townspeople banded together to help them build a house and give them enough tools and seeds to start a modest farm.

Guy thought that it was the universe’s way of thanking them for trying at least. Even if it wasn’t the life he expected to lead, it was...something. A small mercy, instead of dying out in the vast expanse of space, but it wasn’t a large mercy of them winning or at least the Lantern Corps staying together. He didn’t know where John and Kyle were, he hoped that they had the same luck that he and Hal had.

And, so, there they were. Two men, lost in space. They had nothing but the land and the tools they were given, tools that he hadn’t touched before, to live in a way he had never thought about living like before. They had no clue if anyone else had survived or if they were the very last members of the Green Lantern Corps. He was a teacher, a social worker, a space cop. And yet, he had never been a farmer before. Had never needed to work to survive, to plant to live. Had never thought he would need to, thinking that it was a life he never wanted to lead.

It was hard work and it was incredibly unfair. The tools felt unfamiliar in his heavy hands, the wood leaving calluses on his hands as he struck the dirt over and over again until he though that he might be tilling the soil. Just him, Hal at his side, and that empty land. Together, they worked the land into something useable. Hal was a ghost at his side, doing the work he asked and doing nothing else, living for nothing other than to not leave Guy alone. 

He told Guy as much under the stars one night, one of the few times that they talked in the beginning. That he was living because Guy wanted him to, that he hadn’t found a way to join the others that had given their life in the fight they had lost even though there was a part of him that so desperately wanted to. They were a lot more open in the days after, Hal spoke to him like he never had before, moments of true honesty.

When they weren’t working the Earth, they were helping to build a roof to live under from the wood they were given with the incredibly generous townsfolk. It was the hardest work Guy had ever done, but it had gotten done from their desperation from getting sick of sleeping under the stars they could never touch again.

Eventually, they had a roof to live under, a bed to share together. Hal was like a ghost after that, like it had all finally hit him, flitting between the fields and the bed that they shared. It was perhaps that bit of comfort that made the guilt so much more obvious on Hal’s face, the guilt he had seen before like a mask on Hal’s face had become the only face he had, the dark circles under his eyes growing so much deeper. When Hal managed to sleep, the only thing that awaited him were nightmares that Guy could feel. Guy found sleep just as hard, laying awake to the sound of Hal trying to sob silently.

Guy knew that Hal dreamt of their dead friends, it was what he dreamt of when he found sleep. The same thing every night, that they were all floating in space, among the stars, and he watched them take their last breaths, no one wearing their rings. Guy floated too, like he was too stubborn to die, or like he needed to make sure it was really happening, until the breath finally left his own body, the darkness rushing up to meet him as the stars disappeared in his eyes.

It wasn’t something they talked about, how Guy would roll over and hold him while he sobbed, a comfort through the nightmares and the memories. Or how Hal would do the same for him when he awoke to tears instead of stars in his eyes. They had failed everyone, their friends and the entire galaxy. They lost, plain and simple. They tried their hardest and they fucked up, they were the last chance the universe had and now they were fucking farming on some desolate planet. Guy hated himself for it, and he knew what self-hatred looked like on Hal’s face enough to see it too. Instead, he stroked Hal’s hair and they didn’t talk about how they knew how it looked to see the other cry, to feel the way they shook in each other’s arms. How they had spent their last night together because they were the kindred spirits in the apocalypse, the two losers with nothing left to return to, and that the fact that they made each other cum was the reason why Guy had grabbed him right as everything went to hell.

Instead, they didn’t talk much for the first few months at all. It was the easier option, the lesser of two evils, to stay in a near silence instead of talking about how their bean plants grew another eighth of an inch or how their friends could be floating dead in space somewhere, bloated corpses in the emptiness of space. It was easier that way to keep his mind off of if and onto the plants that had started to sprout.

They weren’t avoiding each other, Guy helped Hal wash the dirt from his skin and Hal did the same for him. He even read the books that the old traveler gave to him, the ones that were in English, out loud to Hal because they had to do something other than sit and stare at the wall until he could go to bed. Every conversation they had was superficial, just to fill the silence with something entirely meaningless. It was the small talk of men who had known each other for minutes, not the talk of men who had known each other for years, who knew the feeling of the other’s body against their own. They worked, ate, slept, and occasionally made inane small talk about the weather.

It was a few months in that he decided to finally remove his ring. Like he was a divorcée, tossing the ring onto the bedside table. What good was it to him anyway, it had done fuck all in preventing the end of the universe. Guy thought about trying to trade it, but he figured that he might want it if someone figured out how to get the Central Battery back up and running. As unlikely as that was, it was what had stopping him from just tossing it like it was a useless chunk of plastic. Hal had looked, briefly, betrayed at the sight, the first emotion he had seen on Hal’s face in months. It almost made him want to take his ring and put it back on, but he compromised by sliding it onto a piece of twine and tying it around his neck. Hal seemed settled by that, but he kept his ring on anyway, Guy knew he would.

It was a part of Hal, and it always would be. Hal would never be anything but a Green Lantern to himself. It was his identity, and Guy wondered if it would ever stop being an identity to himself as well.

Make no mistake. Guy still saw himself as a Green Lantern, even as he took off the ring. It was just harder to find the faith in the memory of the Corps when he was stuck on some planet, farming to live. 

Although, those days, it seemed as if he was only living for the occasional trip into town, counting down the days until he could make the excuse to go in. It was just something different to do, something other than the same routine. It was a short walk away, just a mile, and that was where the citizens of the region gathered to trade and sell at the marketplace. Guy could sell what they had grown, and buy items that they couldn’t, like fabric to sew messy clothes out of, fertilized poultry eggs to have livestock for eggs and meat, and flowers to add some sort of life to their dead home. Hal seemed to like the flowers whenever Guy brought them home, tending to them until they died, so Guy decided to suggest that they go into town together to pick out some flower seeds.

It was hard to convince Hal to go with him, Hal telling him that he’d be okay with whatever he picked out. But Guy wanted Hal to leave the house, sitting there alone with his thoughts was going to kill him, and Guy was sick of being alone himself. He wanted the company, he wanted the Hal he used to know but he knew that he wasn’t the Guy from before anyway. The Hal he had now was going to have to be enough.

He wore Hal down enough that he agreed to go, Guy kept their arms linked in fear of Hal turning tail and running right back for their little house. But he didn’t, and they made it into the marketplace on a sunny day.

The market was busy, people of all kinds running around, whether they had something to do or if they were just enjoying the day. Leisure was something Guy hadn’t thought about in a long time, but he kept their arms linked and could pretend like they were just having a nice time together as friends or as something more. They bought sweet pastries, listening to a band playing unfamiliar instruments and familiar songs on the street while they ate, and just took their day slow. They had done their chores for the day already, Guy had made sure of it.

He wanted Hal to enjoy something for once, for the first time since they had crash landed on that planet. They shopped around, just looking at the familiar and the strange, until they finally made their way to the booth that was stuffed to the brim with blossoming flowers and the seeds to grow some of their own. Guy pulled a pretty blue blossom from one of the bunches and tucked it behind Hal’s ear. It softened his face a little bit and he smiled, something that Guy had missed, something that made him smile as well.

It wasn’t quite happiness, but it was the closest he had seen on either one of them in a very long time.

After that, there was a shift in the way they acted around one another. After months of feeling like he was going to crawl out of his skin from the feeling of isolation, the person on the other side of the bed a million miles away, Guy woke up and he felt like talking. So he did, asking Hal how he slept even though he knew neither of them had that much as he brewed the coffee-like drink they bought the previous evening. Hal seemed to shift as well, responding and even making conversation himself about the weather, about some movie they had both seen a long time ago.

When they worked, Guy sang the songs he could remember. He wasn’t a good singer, never had been, and he could never quite remember the words to the songs. But Hal smiled at that, even laughing when he fucked up the words to some old song. It was a small, hollow sound that rattled in his mouth like a dying engine, but it was something and Guy had missed the way his eyes lit up when he laughed.

If the man he used to be found out that he was living to make Hal Jordan smile these days, he probably would’ve decked himself for it. The person he used to be would’ve been just fine with how unhappy Hal was, at least he thought that was the case. Maybe there was a part of him that always liked the look of a smile on his face, a thought that gave him pause when he was watering the plants that day.

Guy found himself wondering if Hal even registered the night they had spent together before everything went wrong. The drinks they had shared, the jokes they had made. 

_Corpses for the Corps._ Not so funny in hindsight, but Guy found himself snorting under his breath anyway, leaning against the rake he was using. He supposed that they were right about that, it was a phrase that had been stuck in his head since the end like some bad pop song from the radio. Like the ones he sung to entertain Hal, to make him smile.

He wondered if that bar had even survived, if it was still serving the grubbiest patrons in the known-universe. If the alley they had fucked in, _their_ alley was still there, with the ghosts of their pasts selves still in it. He remembered the way Hal had looked at him, the way they slid together because they were simultaneously the very last and the very first people the other wanted to be with.

Did Hal still think of him like that? Did he still think of him in that way, did he even think of him at all before that point or was it just because he was there? Guy could still feel the way Hal’s eyes bored into his like fucking drills as they rut together like animals in that filthy alleyway. Their hands touching each other’s bodies, skin to skin, fabric to fabric because they weren’t going to get undressed where others could see them. It hadn’t been enough, Guy wished that they could’ve had all the time in the world together, wished that Hal would look at him like he had that night.

Maybe Guy should’ve laid him out on the grass, fucking stroked his face like they were making love. Maybe Hal would act like it had happened then, like it mattered. He was sick of Hal walking around like a fucking ghost, like he was the only one who felt the guilt and the grief over what had happened.

He realized that he was clutching that rake in his hand too hard, and that he was focusing on the wrong thing. He was being selfish and he knew it, processing his grief in a way that made him feel isolated and angry. Guy remembered being a teacher in that moment, how the kids would hit each other under moments of stress, and he wondered if it would help him to hit Hal. 

It certainly wouldn’t help Hal. So, instead, he took three deep breaths, shutting his eyes, and remembering the way it had felt to be with Hal. The way they had moved together, the way it had felt _right_. He remembered what happened after, when he had led Hal to a nearby motel.

There had only been one bed of course, but that was all they needed. They undressed together, laying next to each other. Hal had his arms around him, holding Guy as they just breathed together in the same space. They hadn’t needed words, words would’ve only hurt more, and Guy knew that now in hindsight. 

But it hadn’t been uncomfortable, there was no pause in the way they moved together. They fell asleep in each other’s space for not nearly enough sleep. He woke up next to Hal, and onward they went to face the end together.

And to face what came after the end. Together.

It had been easy, the way they had fallen together. Guy and Hal had never been _easy_ , even when they had been on the same side after the whole Parallax fiasco, when Hal came back and Guy had been right by his side. Maybe it was the same exact thing that had happened before, but they had beaten Parallax and had to pick up the pieces after. Now they had to pick up the pieces of everything they had lost, everything they had failed to save.

Yet, maybe, they could save each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed, feel free to leave some love (or hate) either here or on my various social medias:
> 
> [ Fic Blog ](http://fanfictionolivia.tumblr.com/)   
>  [ Main Blog ](http://deadantmen.tumblr.com/)   
>  [ Twitter ](https://twitter.com/fficolivia)   
>  [ Pillowfort ](https://www.pillowfort.io/oliviathecf)
> 
> Thanks!


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